Perhaps
the only thing that bores me more than hearing incessant murder-mystery
reportage is writing about it. And although I'm not sure which I find
less tolerable, watching a washed-up ex-jock lead police on a low-speed
chase as Geraldo waxes redundant, reporting on each tire rotation,
or seeing the newsman comb Aruban sands like Inspector Clouseau trying
to distinguish between foreign and domestic wax, there are those rare
times when such a story has a subtext that just begs treatment. So
it is with the sad tale of Natalee Holloway.

Quite
frankly, what strikes this scribe about this case makes him, I suppose,
quite odd by today's reckoning. A teenage girl's disappearance is
tragic but not surprising; why, we have enough missing persons in
our country to cover milk cartons from Bangor to Seattle. Nor is the
dearth of evidence enough to raise my left eyebrow into Mr. Spock
territory, as many murders and disappearances remain unsolved. Then,
too, while I claim no expertise in the area of Aruban law enforcement,
it wouldn't shock me if the police on a virtually crime-free little
island bore more in common with the Keystone Kops than Kojak. No,
what surprises me far more than any of these things is parental acceptance
of what is quickly becoming a rite of passage: the hedonistic student
vacation.

How
is it, I ask you, that millions of American parents became convinced
that it was normal and healthy to treat their kids like pagan princes
and princesses, indulging their licentious desires and hedonistic
impulses? And make no mistake about it, this isn't Beaver Cleaver
and these students don't journey to paradise to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey
or bobbing-for-apples . . . it's more like the forbidden apple.

Let's
be blunt, one way a daughter could frame this is, "Hey, Mom and Dad,
can I go to Cancun for spring break (or to celebrate, or some other
occasion)?" But translated that often means, "Hey, Mom and Dad, can
I go to Cancun, where I'll most likely have sex with some libidinous
boy you don't know from Adam - maybe even with lots of boys - drink,
smoke, and perhaps even do drugs?" That sounds crazy but is, in essence,
accurate. Crazier still is that the parents' answer is often "yes."

Truly,
this phenomenon is emblematic of the spirit of the age. Adult guidance
is sorely lacking nowadays, if not nigh to absent. I remember a segment
featured on a rather highly regarded news and commentary program involving
some teens who were being punished by their school for using a school
camera to photograph a striptease act performed by a female classmate.
The interviewer was grilling one of the boy participants and asked
him why he didn't depart the scene. The boy's response was that any
guy would have stayed, prompting the pundit to proclaim that had he
been a lad in such a situation, he would have left. Okay, I know,
I know, I don't believe it either, especially given my suspicions
concerning that correspondent's prurient peccadillos. But really,
what he or anyone else would have done is not even close to being
germane.

The
correct answer is that, yes, the flesh is weak and teen temptations
are great, but that's what adults are for. This is not to say that
there wasn't a time when the young's moral compasses nudged them toward
chastity, however, such pangs of conscience could be overwhelmed by
passions of the heart. This is why, back in those repressed, puritanical
days abhorred by the libertines, adults served as a firewall against
youthful excess, boldly intervening when teen spirit trumped the Holy
Spirit. Thus, a scenario such as the one central to the news story
would have been impossible in our grandparents' era. The girls had
too much modesty and both sexes had the right amount of guidance,
with paternal voices that would sternly admonish, "You don't do
that, Son." Young men may not have had the strength to resist,
but older men had the fortitude to restrain.

What
happened then was that we had the greatest degeneration. Over-indulged
children grew into parents devoid of self-discipline and character.
Products of the sexual-devolution, they had sordid pasts to justify,
rendering them too lacking in virtue to lay down the law without feeling
hypocritical and too self-centered and relativistic to realize the
law isn't of their own design and their feelings don't matter. To
tolerate moral laxity in our children simply so we can feel better
about past indiscretions is as selfish as allowing academic laxity
simply because we were undisciplined students. Parental authority
to enforce rectitude derives not from some untenable claim that one
is the embodiment of perfect morality, but from the fact that He who
is has enjoined parents to be watchtowers over their progeny.

Then
there's the feminism factor. Because of politically-correct feminist
imperatives, girls now know more about sex but less about the opposite
sex. There was a time when girls were told that boys were vastly different
from them, possessing stronger libidos and bodies. Girls were taught
to avoid placing themselves in compromising situations; they were
armed with the facts upon which good judgement rested and safety depended.

Now,
though, such counsel is sacrilege. Girls' minds are filled with notions
of the sameness of the sexes, with its corollary that they can go
where their sisters of yore feared to tread. Why, God forbid that
we should tell them that, like it or not, they are the more vulnerable
sex, and that this fact of life should inform their thinking.

Not
that I'm laboring under the illusion that modern girls are all sugar
and spice and everything nice. Owing to feminism, which liberated
the fairer sex from common-sense, morality, restraint, and chastity,
quasi-harlotry now infects much of contemporary womanhood. A lady
close to my heart said it best: "Forty years ago you knew who the
bad girls were; now you know who the good girls are." And now we have
a whole generation of girls-gone-wild.

The
bottom line is that we should avoid exposing our kids to what pre-pagan
America used to call "occasions of sin." These are situations in which
the temptation to do things we shouldn't is great. Like, for instance,
an alcoholic accepting a job tending bar. I remember when one of my
students, a very nice, innocent teenage girl who had attended a single-sex
high school and who had never been out on a date, as far as I know,
was preparing for college. Once there, she was to be thrust into a
co-ed dorm, a prospect that seemed to cause her father no noticeable
consternation. Truly amazing, for a father of the 1950's would have
recoiled at such a thought. Now, though, it's better to serve up a
daughter on a platter than dare be guilty of refusing to treat her
just like any other guy. We have gone from chaperones to pheromones
in two generations.

Obviously,
this piece isn't first and foremost about Natalee Holloway. It's about
far more than one individual, far more even than protecting life and
limb. Millions of youths take hedonistic vacations, and virtually
all return safe and sound - in body, anyway. But some damage isn't
measured in shiners, cuts and contusions. A parent's job is to safeguard
his child, and that means mind, body, and soul.

Lest
my fellow men (and I do mean "men" right now) think that I have struck
a gratuitously monastic note, let me assure you that I'm flesh and
blood like everyone else, and temptation is no stranger to me. But
I also know the truth of Edna St. Vincent Millay's rhyme, "Pity me
that the heart is slow to learn what the swift mind perceives at every
turn." When you realize that there's a chasm that lies between the
heart and the head, it becomes easy to understand that railing against
things that may be in your past or heart isn't hypocrisy, but the
exercise of virtue and the triumph of the will and intellect.

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Just
because it feels good doesn't make it right for us . . . or for our
children. And when they are in the midst of the battle between the
flesh and spirit, parents are supposed to know what side to be on.
Moral formation trumps hedonistic vacation. You can't keep your kids
on a leash forever, but neither should you throw them to the wolves.

Selwyn Duke lives in Westchester County, New
York. He's a tennis professional, internet entrepreneur and writer whose
works have appeared on various sites on the Internet, including Intellectual
Conservative, nenewamerica.us (Alan Keyes) and Mensnet. Selwyn has traveled
extensively in his life, visiting exotic locales such as India, Morocco
and Algeria and quite a number of other countries while playing the international
tennis circuit.

Then,
too, while I claim no expertise in the area of Aruban law enforcement,
it wouldn't shock me if the police on a virtually crime-free little island
bore more in common with the Keystone Kops than Kojak.